Sonntag, 24. Mai 2015

In
2009, the former "Maddie case" inspector was chosen by PSD to be the
candidate for the Municipality of Olhão. He was pushed from the race by
the McCann couple.

The story is over six years old, but it
remains fully alive in the memory of Gonçalo Amaral, the former "Maddie
case" coordinator. After he retired, PSD wanted to launch him into the
life of politics, indicating him "as candidate for the presidency of the
Municipality of Olhão", in late 2008. When everything already pointed
at him as the strongest candidate for victory, a contrary announcement
came from Manuela Ferreira Leite [then president of the party]. Gonçalo
Amaral was received by the then PSD leader who apologised to him about
the decision.

"The McCannns allege that they devalued the book
and only the showing of the documentary prompted them to react. It's not
true. The book came out and was devalued by the couple, but before the
documentary, in January of 2009, the newspapers published that I had
been chosen by PSD to run for the presidency of the Olhão Municipality",
the former inspector says, stressing: "What happened was that the
couple always tried to destroy me, to destroy my credibility, and they
were scared of the possibility of me stopping being an outsider, a
police retiree, and becoming the president of the Municipality of Olhão.
They were scared, they thought that a mayor would be a more credible
figure than that of a police officer", says Amaral, describing his
version of the events at that time. "The couple's reaction was swift. In
a flash trip, Gerald McCann came to Lisbon, met with his lawyer, Dr
Rogério Alves, with a PSD leader, who is said to be Dr José Luís Arnaut,
and the couple’s current lawyer, Dr Isabel Duarte. They talked about
me, a Portuguese citizen with the right to vote or to be elected in any
democratic election, and they even delivered a report about me, done by
their private detectives that had been hired to look for their daughter.
After the meeting, Dr Manuela Ferreira Leite announced that I would not
be a candidate, overriding the will of the Olhão militants and the will
of the Algarve's people."

After this removal, Gonçalo Amaral
asked to be received by Ferreira Leite. “She received me at the party's
headquarters, and only apologised, to me and to my family”, he revealed
in an interview to Nova Gente, once more defending that “the couple
didn’t suffer any damages, they were merely scared about the course my
life was taking, because they wanted to discredit me”.